“This event feels really different from the climate march because that was so diverse with people from so many different backgrounds,” said
Dedanu Silvia, amidst the sea of people wearing blue at the
Flood Wall Street protest September 22.

Sylvia, a young woman of Sri Lankan descent, stood
out as one of the few non-white faces at the protest, a
smaller show of civil disobedience in a series of actions
against climate change leading up to the United Nations
Climate Summit.

“This is mostly white — and not just white, but it’s people
who are able to risk arrest and also happen to be white,
which, for me, asks the question: ‘Who are the people being
excluded from this conversation who are the most effected?’ We know that black and brown people are the most
effected and yet contribute least to climate change. It’s
frustrating for me to see that,” Sylvia added.

Compared to the People’s Climate March, which had
nearly 350,000 activists, organizers, community groups,
politicians, and average citizens take to the streets of New
York City September 21 in what was billed as the largest
ever event of its kind, the 4,000-strong Flood Wall Street
mobilization was notably non-inclusive of black and
brown bodies.

While there was a common criticism about the People’s
Climate March — that it was too well-planned and sponsored, with support from the very corporate entities that
many were marching in direct opposition to, to truly be
a strategic act of political resistance — it was intentional
in its inclusion of marginalized and people of color communities.

Sharmin Hossain, a Bangladeshi-American woman,posted on her Facebook wall hours after the march, ‘We allknow that marches aren’t movements. We recognize thisMarch isn’t going to change the world. We understand cor-porate complicity & the myriad of ways disaster & greencapitalism has worked with the co-funders of these “grass-roots” movements. But do not ignore the presence of all theresistors. Do not invisiblize the communities who are tak-ing the streets, dancing in the streets, marching with artand visions. Do not pretend like our generation believes aMarch will solve the climate crisis. We inherited this Earth.’Below this was a photo of a line of dark-haired women,flags raised like spears behind them, holding a banner withblack block letters reading, ‘Respect indigenous rights,’and, below that, in red, ‘End colonialism.’Indigenous groups led the People’s Climate March in the‘Frontlines of crisis, forefront of change’ section, which rep-resented those most directly impacted by climate change.

The desi contingent took their spot in this block, loudand proud. Hossain and others held signs and other art-work with messages like ‘Decolonize our climate’ and‘Defend our homes, defend our homelands.’The voices in these parts of the march had a clear andcoherent collective stance: environmental justice meansbreaking down the broader global systems that make cli-mate change wreak havoc first and foremost on the GlobalSouth and colonized peoples everywhere.

“We’re working to raise the visibility of South Asians as a
community that cares about climate change,” Barnali
Ghosh of South Asian Americans for Climate Justice told
India Abroad. “We recognize that we live in a country that’s
historically one of the largest polluters and is still one of the
most powerful countries in the world and is not taking
leadership on climate change. And even as we live here, it
is our homelands that are being the most impacted and so
we ask President Obama to take action on climate change.

Action, not words.”“What are we going to do about the fact that we live inAmerica and we’re complicit with the policies that tend tobe more capitalistic?” Ghosh continued. “There are first-world companies that are going and building mines —basically they’re importing technology that has failed inthe US to places like India. What that’s doing is destroy-ing our homes. We want to defend our homes hereand we want to defend our homelands. We’re hop-ing that people are moved by the fact that even asthey live here and emit they may not have a home-land to go back to.”Vaishali Patil, convener of the Forum AgainstDisastrous Projects in Konkan, came to New Yorkfrom Maharashtra to march. She too saw in India’smarch towards industrialization as a death knell forthe environment.

“When people ask me, ‘How is the climate changemovement in India?’ I see, in each and every cornerof the country, people are fighting against a bigdam, people are fighting against land acquisitionfor a nuclear power project, people are fightingagainst the environmental clearance that’s beinggiven to mining projects — this is the climatechange movement in India,” Patil said. “So I feelthat this movement is basically of the marginalizedsection of society.”The SAACJ joined groups like the Adhikaar,EcoSikh, the Bangladesh Environment Network,Desis Rising Up and Moving at the march. Theybrought their culture with them — bhangra movespulsed through the crowd to the beat of the dhol,joined by a trumpet.

Bandana Kaur, program ambassador, EcoSikh,
talked about how the organization has seen climate
change impact Punjab.

“Our land of five rivers has no water,” she said. “We
have water shortages in 75 percent of our land, our
soils are lacking nutrients, and the biodiversity of
Patil also mentioned the same issues in her region due to,
more specifically, 60 sanctioned mining projects, 19 proposed coal power projects, and the largest nuclear power
plant in the world that’s underway there.

“The fight that we fight when we challenge this development model is basically for our survival, because people’s livelihoods depend on agriculture or fishing, or for
the tribal population a major source of livelihood comes
from the forest and the land and they’ve been deprived of
this,” Patil explained.

She criticized Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s
stance on climate change, stating his presence in the UN
Climate Summit might have at least signaled to the world
that India’s leadership cares about the environment.

Instead, she said, under him the new government has
accelerated granting approvals to the power and mining
initiatives, and laws have loosened to make it easier for
multinational corporations to get environmental clearances for big projects.

“India is third in the world in carbon emissions, but inspite of that, our government is denial,” Patil continued.“When there’s a global movement that’s taking place in ahistorical way, by joining this solidarity action we wantto strengthen our movement. This really has broughtgreat hope.”There are more nuances to the situation on the subconti-nent, of course.

“There’s also a class of Indians that has a very wealthy
plush lifestyle in India, who are consuming at rates equal to
if not above those in the developed world,” Kartikeya Singh,
founder of the Indian Youth Climate Network, pointed out,
referring to a 2009 Greenpeace report. “Therefore that class
of citizenry could pay for climate change mitigation adaptation. I don’t think India needs money from the green climate fund. India’s not a poor country; it’s poorly managed.”

Anti-government voices from India
join clarion call for the environment

PARESHGANDHISouth Asian groups who came out to stand up for environmental justice included Brown & Green, South Asian Americans for Climate Justice, EcoSikh, Bangladesh Environment Network, Chhaya CDC, Adhikaar, Indo-Caribbean Alliance, DRUM, Alliance for a Secular and Democratic South Asia, Alliance of South Asians Taking Action, Association for India’s Development, NYC, and Indian Youth Climate Network.